August 2011

So, there’s a reason Google is being so stubborn over this “real names” policy. Google+ isn’t a social network at all, despite the fact that it looks like one. It’s actually the core of an identity service.

I wrote about this for Crikey today, a piece that includes Google chair Eric Schmidt’s confirmation of that plan and some observations that suggest Google+ is failing to reach critical mass.

The continuing bad press over what’s been dubbed #nymwars won’t help. Yet I suspect that Google’s need and desire to prevent Facebook Connect becoming the planet’s default identity service will override most concerns.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Schmidt has always been the go-for-profits guy. Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page is reportedly aware of the problem, although an informative post by Stephen R van den Berg says it’s unclear whether he’s being properly informed about the criticism. That post was written a week ago, however, so I daresay Page has seen at least some of the news reports since. And the other co-founder, Sergey Brin, has been notably silent.

Corporate Largesse

On Wednesday I attended the Security 2011 Expo & Conference at Darling Harbour. As is usual for when one has a media pass to such events, I was given free food and drink.

Also on Wednesday I went to Text 100’s Christmas in August Event. Text 100 is a PR firm, and Christmas in August is where their clients show off their new consumer gadgetry that’ll be on sale for Christmas. The food and drink was free. And copious. Too copious. Way too copious.

I hadn’t been awake very long when I did this live radio piece. At the time I thought it was a bit all over the place, because I simply talked about whatever came into me head. But listening back today, I think it’s actually OK. What do you think?

I’m covering it for CSO Online, and for the moment I’m assuming that’ll be in the form of written material. I’d also like to cover it for the Patch Monday podcast, but I don’t think that’ll be possible due to the contractual arrangements.

The event itself runs for a day and a half. An afternoon of presentations followed by a day of roundtable discussions. I’m looking forward to it.

If there’s anything else happening in Canberra either side of this event, please let me know so I can plan to attend,

Just 10 days from now I’m flying to Kuala Lumpur as the guest of Kaspersky Lab, the information security company. It’ll be my first time to Malaysia.

The event is a briefing for Kaspersky’s partners and the media in the Asia-Pacific region about their new Endpoint Security 8 for Windows product, due for release in October.

The event itself is Thursday 8 and Friday 9 September, but I arrive early on Wednesday 7 and fly out late on Monday 12, so I’ll have three or four days to explore the city.

Any suggestions for what I should do and see?

As an aside, I’ve actually met the founder, Eugene Kaspersky. We were seated together on the panel discussion Is cloud secure enough for business? at the AusCERT Conference on information security. He’s everything you’d expect a Russian billionaire to be. However I’m fairly sure he won’t be at the KL event.

There’s been a few developments this week in my battle with Google over my name. More communication. And more media coverage.

On 18 August I responded to Google’s boilerplate email thusly:

Hi folks,

My full, legal name is a mononym, “Stilgherrian”. It has been so for 30 years. This name has been used consistently throughout that time on every official document, in every credit line in print, on radio and on television, in everyday use… everywhere.

Dare I say it, a Google Search will soon reveal that.

My only photo ID is my passport, and I am unwilling to send a copy because I have security concerns.

I can’t edit my name in Google Profiles to match my “real” name, because it won’t let me leave the surname field blank.

If you’re not yet at least experimenting with Twitter, the real-time social messaging service, you should be.

Suppress the corporate paranoia. It’s a lot easier than you might think. And while Twitter does get far more attention than its relatively small size might suggest — truly active Twitter users number perhaps 20 million globally compared with Facebook’s 750 million active users and counting — it punches well above its weight in terms of connecting with influential community members.

Twitter may not ever become the core real-time service used by the masses. Or if it does, it may only be for a few years. You only have to look at the last decade to see the then-leading MySpace surpassed by Facebook in 2008, just four years after Facebook was founded. Google’s launch of Google+ in June this year has generated plenty of speculation that the search and advertising giant’s foray into social networking will in turn wipe Facebook off the planet. Who knows?

There will always be some real-time social messaging service, however. Whether that’s Twitter as a stand-alone service, or whether we all end up using a real-time component of Facebook or Google+ or something that has yet to be deployed — none of that matters. The principles and practices of real-time messaging will doubtless end up being much the same.

Anything you might do with Twitter will be easy to migrate to any other real-time messaging system. The lessons you learn will carry across too.

My argument, such that it is, is that corporations like local governments avoid change because they’re paranoid, so they need to get themselves some mental health. I present an anonymous theory about “The Three Pillars of Mental Health”. Twitter, I then argue, is the perfect low-risk exercise for a government starting to involve itself in social media and social networking to start overcoming that paranoia. I then present some suggestions for how they might tweet.

Recent Articles

My week of Monday 28 November to Sunday 4 December 2016 started off being as unproductive as the previous week, but it became solidly productive at the end. I won’t go into the details, because as you’ll see below there’s a lot happening. Podcasts The new Corrupted Nerds podcast, Conversations 16: Reflections on Ruxcon 2016, […]

My week of Monday 21 to Sunday 27 November 2016 was even less productive than the previous week, but I know why that happened. One, a change to my medication dosages screwed up my sleep patterns for a while. Two, I did quite a bit of background work that won’t produce visible results for a […]

My week of Monday 14 to Sunday 20 November 2016 was less productive than I’d hoped, but hey that seems to be the theme, right? I have, however, started doing some of the things that my doctor recommended a couple of months back. Starting an exercise regime with some walking, for instance, and a few […]

My week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 November 2016 was remarkably unproductive. A significant podcast appeared, though, and I did a bit of thinking. Which you didn’t see. What was the thinking about? All will become clear in the coming weeks. Or not. Much like the future of the gentleman in the photograph. Podcasts […]

We face up to the inevitable reality of a Trump presidency. We discover a new personal preference that everyone should have. And, well, the inevitable happened. You’ll know when you hear it. This is what to expect, though, when you assemble such an illustrious panel. Fiona Patten MLC, founder of the Australian Sex Party Sally […]